Valve Responds to Reports of Mass Layoff; Projects on Track

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Kami3k

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Except money isn't the reason, fail.
 

tolham

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"No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]."

if purging 25 employees doesn't change anything, then what the hell were those people doing?
 

gm0n3y

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Its hard to imagine that Valve had to let them go for monetary reasons as they make piles of cash with Steam. Maybe they had just been hiring for too long and felt the need to slim down (i.e. getting rid of employee redundancy).
 

atavax

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do we even know that 25 people have been fired? The impression i got was the only one we know for sure is Jeri Ellisworth; the 24 other people that might of been fired and rumored and we don't know.

Also, i am fairly relieved by this news. I'm getting older and gaming is becoming a more casual part of my life and i can definately see myself getting a console in the future instead of pc and both microsoft and sony's consoles don't look particularly appealing. At least Valve seems to understand that they are providing a service and giving the customer the best possible experience trumps everything else.
 

kinggraves

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Valve doesn't have a lot of employees, 25 is a decent chunk of their workforce. There is a difference between "everything's not on the same schedule" and "everything is canceled". Businesses are not going to say they're off track unless there's a solid release date to adhere to. They aren't going to say anything is canned until they're ready to can it. Their hardware has no time frame to stick to, so they can't be off schedule of a project with no public schedule. I cannot imagine things are going to be just the same unless a company of 400 hired 25 extra people to make coffee.

But a bit of patience will pay off. If they hire new people for those positions then the terminations were because those people were an issue. If they aren't rehired, then Valve had some extra employees to cut. Any successful business has to cut off dead weight. Why would they make cuts NOW though when they're clearly forging ahead with ambitious new projects? The people that were cut were the exact positions that would be working with this project.
 

beardguy

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I got laid off shortly after they put my cubicle in the basement. They kept telling me I was the "Project Lead on Half Life 3", but I knew something was fishy when I stopped getting my paycheck. Gabe came down to deliver the news personally in his black Half Life 3 t-shirt (probably to rub it in). Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw him ... the G-man, and things went black. I can't really talk about the rest due to the non-disclosure agreement I signed at my hiring. Plus, what they put in the company water, it makes you forget.

-An ex-Valve employee
 

XZaapryca

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I work in the tech field and have seen this before. Valve is probably straight up lying. "Everything is fine!"...until it isn't. However, if it's truly not financial (if) or canceled projects, these people were fired because they didn't support the direction, weren't getting the job done or simply lost team cohesion (aka, stopped being easy/good to work with).
 

RaZZ3RDeath

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Here's a crazy idea: maybe Valve is waiting for ID Software to release Doom 4 so they can go head to head on the technological front of there game engines: Source 2 vs. ID Tech 5 ... so double dosage of awesomeness in 2014 ?!?
 

antilycus

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DO the math, with needy, "im special" programmers needing 60k (and thats low) x 9 employees that saves a company 480K a year not to mention the heath insurance the drain from the company. Make it 25 people and well, now you can see saving $2,000,000+ / year could sure make a difference. Americans (yes I am one of them) expect too much for what they do. If you don't think you are getting paid faily, go find someone else to pay you what you think you are worth. If Valve does lay off employees, it's not hard to see why. We are expensive (employees)
 

bllue

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If these people's responsibility was mostly hardware then perhaps Valve found some company to offshore the work and Valve fired all this people to save money in the long run. It's just a typical business practice and Valve is a business like any other (there no saints like many like to believe). If you don't need people why keep them around?
Or maybe it has to do with something else.
 
[citation][nom]antilycus[/nom]DO the math, with needy, "im special" programmers needing 60k (and thats low) x 9 employees that saves a company 480K a year not to mention the heath insurance the drain from the company. Make it 25 people and well, now you can see saving $2,000,000+ / year could sure make a difference. Americans (yes I am one of them) expect too much for what they do. If you don't think you are getting paid faily, go find someone else to pay you what you think you are worth. If Valve does lay off employees, it's not hard to see why. We are expensive (employees)[/citation]
We wouldn't have to be so expensive if sh*t didn't cost so much! Every company is filled with greedy leaders that try to cut out the competition and get as much money out of your pocket as possible. Apple is a prime example. Try telling me with a straight face that Apple sells computers at a reasonable price. It's not about offering a good product at a fair price. Those days are gone and that is why we are all desperate to make more because everything is overpriced you just don't know because it's been that way since... (I think it was the 50's when most people made plenty more than they needed.)
 

bluestar2k11

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Maybe why they were let go?

[citation][nom]tolham[/nom]"if purging 25 employees doesn't change anything, then what the hell were those people doing?[/citation]
 

sirencall

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[citation][nom]tolham[/nom]"No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]."if purging 25 employees doesn't change anything, then what the hell were those people doing?[/citation]

That's probably why they were purged. Remember Valve doesn't have heads or anything like that, but just people who come together for projects. These people probably weren't doing anything or weren't coming together. Its pretty much the entire rule book for Valve, come together and help each other on projects you could be most useful in.
 

sirencall

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[citation][nom]antilycus[/nom]DO the math, with needy, "im special" programmers needing 60k (and thats low) x 9 employees that saves a company 480K a year not to mention the heath insurance the drain from the company. Make it 25 people and well, now you can see saving $2,000,000+ / year could sure make a difference. Americans (yes I am one of them) expect too much for what they do. If you don't think you are getting paid faily, go find someone else to pay you what you think you are worth. If Valve does lay off employees, it's not hard to see why. We are expensive (employees)[/citation]

Ignoring the "im f*cking special" CEO's who take in on average 40-250 million a year, or the CEO's who runs the company in the ground and retires with over 1 billion up to 8 billion in some cases. Yeah you come back to me with that 2 million dollar figure and try to make me feel bad for not thinking $60,000 a year for making your product exist in the first place is something that says "im special."
 

nlcbryan

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[citation][nom]bllue[/nom]If these people's responsibility was mostly hardware then perhaps Valve found some company to offshore the work and Valve fired all this people to save money in the long run. It's just a typical business practice and Valve is a business like any other (there no saints like many like to believe). If you don't need people why keep them around? Or maybe it has to do with something else.[/citation]

I think this is the most sensible answer to all the comments i read. I believe they outsourced their hardware project to china or someplace cheaper and layoff their staffs.
 

f-14

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sounds like the microsoft store is kicking valves collective arses!

But there's speculation that the cuts weren't made over performance issues (as in Valve is cutting the slackers), but that the cuts are driven by "company challenges".
 

FLGibsonJr

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My guess is that they are in financial trouble, and by the bad timing of this layoff (Linux announcement), it is probably being forced upon them, which is an indicator that the financial problems could be pretty severe. I read comments on another site attributed to one of the laid off workers that said "big decisions" were being made, and that there could be one or two more waves of layoffs of this size. For right now all of this is speculation. I do wonder if Valve (Steam) goes bankrupt, what will happen to everyone's games? Do you just lose them?
 

bluestar2k11

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I find it near impossible that Valve is going, or could go Bankrupt. They basically print money off Steam. and their ever expanding the market steam can aim for.

[citation][nom]FLGibsonJr[/nom] I do wonder if Valve (Steam) goes bankrupt, what will happen to everyone's games? Do you just lose them?[/citation]
 
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